Blogs
Greater NW Pride: Lifetime and Hallmark Channel Holiday Films and the Normalization of the LGBTQI+ Movement
9/16/2020
Lifetime and Hallmark Channels, Holiday Films, and the Normalization of the LGBTQI+ Movement I’m going to take a break from the documentary filmmaker David France mini-marathon, begun with a review of the 2020 HBO film, Welcome to Chechnya last week, and go to some unexpected news. Lifetime films is making one of their classic Christmas movies with a gay couple-falling-in-love film! While I am not necessarily drawn into holiday, Christmas films on Hallmark or Lifetime channels because of...
Greater NW Pride: Welcome to Chechnya: A Film Review
9/9/2020
“Welcome to Chechnya”: A Film Review Like many who read this blog, I’ve become quite the film and tv critic during the COVID 19 pandemic, especially of LGBTQI+ films, series, tv shows. I’ve watched the last episodes of the re-boot of Will and Grace on Hulu/NBC; I watched episodes of Euphoria on HBO and was stunned by the power of this series, featuring the new young transgender actor Hunter McShafer. I got caught up on Schitt’s Creek on Netflix, and laughed and cried at the wedding ...
Greater NW Pride: There's a Difference
9/4/2020
There’s a Difference When I was a music therapist, one of the songs I sang, in a circle, with a mixture of students who were living with a disability and those who were not disabled was “Alike and Different.” The ditty went like this, with clapping hands of course, and was a chant: “Alike and different, alike and different, we are alike and different!” At the end of the chant we would turn to the person on our right and say how we were alike, and on our left, how we were different. And then ...
Greater NW Pride: God’s Abundant Love for LGBTQI2S+ People
8/24/2020
God’s Abundant Love for LGBTQI2S+ People I was delighted to read of the actions of a Carmelite nun, Sr. Monica Astorga, in Argentina who did the Godly thing of opening up a housing complex specifically for transgender women. I wasn’t the only one who was delighted of this news. Last week, Pope Francis responded to an email from Sr. Monica, informing him of her latest project—the establishment of this housing for transgender women in Argentina, and the Pope, in a handwritten message, told ...
Greater NW Pride: Cancel Culture, Transgender Lives, and the Church
8/20/2020
Cancel Culture, Transgender Lives, and the Church One of the popular phrases today in modern culture is “cancel culture.” What is cancel culture? It refers to, “the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming” (dictionary.com). In the current politics of this land, there...